The long road home gets longer when coming back from a loss. Games away from Jadwin Gym have been particularly brutal for the women's basketball team this season, and that trend continued this weekend.
Princeton (10-13 overall, 4-5 Ivy League) dropped a pair of away games, the first a last-second, 69-66 defeat at the hands of Cornell (10-13, 6-4) and the second a close, 58-53 loss to Columbia (7-17, 3-7).
In the first contest, the team absorbed a tough loss against the Big Red in one of the Tigers' closest defeats of the season. A last-minute layup by Cornell guard Jeomi Maduka decided the game.
Maduka, who has a reputation for quickness and is last year's Ivy League Rookie of the Year, caught an inbounds pass on the left elbow with 21 seconds left. She drove left for the layup and was unintentionally fouled while going up for the shot, which gave her an and-one opportunity. The ensuing free throw gave the Big Red a 67-66 lead, which it would not relinquish.
Oddly enough, Maduka's tremendous offensive play came at the close of a low-scoring, defense-dominated period.
The game was truly a tale of two halves. The first period was dominated by offense, as Princeton shot 55 percent from the floor and scored 38 points.
As has happened throughout the Tigers' season, however, Princeton was undone by turnovers. The Tigers gave up the ball 10 times, which allowed the Big Red to have an astonishing plus-13 margin in shots taken. Due in large part to this advantage, Cornell tied the score at 38 going into halftime, despite having made just 42 percent of its shots.
Perhaps in response to the freewheeling first-half, both teams clamped down on defense. After the break, the Tigers only converted a third of their shots, though that statistic actually topped the Big Red's 27 percent clip.
One strong indicator of how poorly both teams shot in the second half was the rebounding numbers.
After collecting 14 boards in the first half, Princeton had 23 in the second. Cornell enjoyed a similar increase in rebounds, collecting 11 more rebounds after halftime.
Junior forward Meagan Cowher ended the game with 12 rebounds.
Cowher also scored 15 points, giving her the first of two double-doubles on the weekend.
The Tigers featured more than one outstanding individual effort in the loss. Senior forward Casey Lockwood had a career-high 22 points.
Saturday night, the Lions overcame a six-point halftime deficit to rally for the win.
Columbia, which had shot only 39 percent before the break, attacked the basket in the second half. The Lions had eight more points in the paint than the Tigers and hit 51 percent of their shots.
Princeton's offense was not enough to counteract Columbia's 38 second-half points. Making the outburst particularly painful was the fact that many of those points came from one source — Lion guard Brittney Carfora.
Carfora did her best Ray Allen impression, putting up five long-range shots in the final 20 minutes and sinking four of them.
On Friday, not even Allen could have matched Carfora, whose bombs shell-shocked a Tiger defense geared towards stopping penetration.
Turnovers once again contributed to Princeton's downfall.
The Tigers had more turnovers — 23 in total, including 12 in the second half — than baskets made (22), a deficit which took a heavy toll.
One of Carfora's three-pointers came when she stole the ball from sophomore guard Caitlin O'Neill with 10 minutes left in regulation.
That shot started off a two minute stretch in which Carfora nailed three shots from beyond the arc.
In some ways, though, Princeton could console itself, as its offense actually remained quite strong in the second half.
As much as the Tigers' defense seemed to suffer late in the game, their game-plan on the other end of the court continued to hum along. After scoring 26 points on 46 percent shooting before the half, Princeton netted 27 points while hitting 47 percent of its shots in the second stanza.
Cowher would finish with 16 points and 11 rebounds for her second double-double of the weekend.
Against Ivy opponents, Cowher is averaging over 21 points per game to go along with 7.9 rebounds.
The Tigers' next two games come against Harvard (10-12, 8-1) and Dartmouth (13-10, 7-2), the No. 1 and 2 teams in the Ancient Eight.
Thankfully for Princeton, the games will take place in the friendly confines of Jadwin.
The long road home will be but a short walk back to the dorms — a trip the Tigers hope to take following victories rather than defeats.
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